Since Irene and her dad had been busy eating their dinner – which she had cooked for them, as per usual – Kathleen had hoped she’d be able to finish getting ready for her date unmolested. No such luck, clearly, as she emerged from the bathroom to find Irene, fist aloft, ready to rat-a-tat-tat it against the door.
Kathleen had changed her outfit several times. Which was quite a feat, given her meagre wardrobe, and the need to wrap up to keep warm. But her eventual choice – a roll-neck sweater and her navy knee-length kilt – seemed about as unlikely to incur her stepmother’s wrath as would a head-to-toe boiler suit.
But it wasn’t the fact that her knees were on show that seemed to attract Irene’s ire. ‘What do you think you look like?’ she sneered. ‘You’re actually going out like that? You look like a twelve-year-old, off to see the bleeding vicar!’
Darren’s dead, Kathleen intoned to herself. She’s deranged. Make allowances. You’ll be gone in half an hour. It doesn’t matter what she says. Don’t rise to it. Just DO NOT rise to it!
And you look like a whore, she answered, even if only in her head. An old one, as well. With your old-lady bosoms bursting out of your nasty satin blouse, and that ridiculous short skirt, and that horrible red lipstick …
‘It’s cold out,’ she said, sidestepping Irene. ‘I’m dressing sensibly.’ Then she half ran, half skipped down the stairs.
Unusually, given how eagle eyed she was these days, she heard Terry’s voice before she saw him. ‘Now there’s a sight for sore eyes!’ he said, picking up his pint and slipping off the stool he’d been sitting on at the far end of the bar.
Her father, who’d been chatting to him, smiled his agreement.
She slipped through the hatch, wishing blushes could be turned on and off like radios, to stop the static crackling between them as their eyes met. ‘You look nice too,’ she told Terry brightly. ‘I like your jumper.’
‘This old thing?’ he said, pulling at the front of it and frowning. It was a big chunky jumper, like a fisherman might wear. Sort of stone-coloured, flecked, with a big floppy roll-neck. It suited him. It also looked home-knitted. She wondered by who. His mam and dad lived hundreds of miles away. He’d come to Bradford with Iris. Had his mam sent it up for him? She hoped so. ‘About a million years old, this is,’ he told her. ‘I’m lucky the moths haven’t had it. Like a drink before we go, love? While I finish this up?’
‘Half of lager, please,’ she said, but her dad had beaten her to it. One had appeared by her arm even before she answered. Terry handed it to her, grinning. ‘How’s that for service, eh?’
She sipped the head off it. ‘How was Holland, then?’
‘Flat and full of cheese.’
‘When did you get back?’
‘Three quarters of an hour ago. Traffic’s been murder.’
‘Only three quarters of an hour back?’ Kathleen said, shocked. She remembered him saying he’d be driving overnight to catch a dawn ferry, too. ‘God, Terry,’ she said, ‘have you slept at all? You must be shattered!’
He raised his glass to her. ‘Got an hour’s kip on the boat, but you know what I always say? Plenty of chance to sleep when I’m dead.’ Then his expression became thoughtful. He glanced at John, who’d moved off down the bar, and he grimaced. The weight of it was everywhere. The sense of life being so fragile was always in everyone’s minds. ‘Anyway,’ he said, dipping his head closer to her, ‘more to the point, Kathy. How are you?’
Kathy. She loved how he always called her Kathy. ‘Oh, okay,’ she said. ‘So-so. Ups and downs. You know how it goes. But all the better for …’
‘Seeing me?’ he said, his eyes meeting her gaze and making her blush again. ‘If so, I have to say the feeling’s mutual.’
She batted him lightly on the arm. ‘I was going to say all the better for having a Friday night off, for a change. But, since you mention it …’ She buried her face back in her glass, all too aware that the colour in her cheeks had probably already finished the sentence for her.
‘Ooh, look at you!’
They both looked up. Irene had evidently come down, then. She was now standing, hands on hips, behind the bar. She was also smiling idiotically at Terry.
‘Alright, Irene?’ he said, before finishing the last inch in his own glass.
‘Look at you,’ she said again, extending an arm and then a finger, which almost reached but didn’t quite connect with Terry’s chest. ‘Hmm,’ she said, her eyes running past Kathleen in a point-making fashion. ‘Who’s dressed you tonight, eh?’
Now it was Terry’s turn to blush. He seemed lost for words. Then eventually found some. ‘My fairy godmother, evidently,’ he said, glancing at Kathleen and smiling.
But Kathleen was still standing there, agape. ‘Mam!’ she hissed. ‘What are you on about? You’re embarrassing him.’
Irene didn’t bother to answer. Instead she winked at Terry. ‘Oh, I think he knows.’
To which there seemed no kind of answer. At least, Terry didn’t make one. Instead he turned to Kathleen. ‘Done with that?’ he said, gesturing towards her two-thirds empty glass.
She put it down on the bar, unfinished. ‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘Don’t want to miss the fireworks, do we?’
And even then – even then – Irene wouldn’t let them alone. ‘Plenty of fireworks to be had here,’ she simpered, again looking suggestively at Terry. Had she already started on the gin tonight, or what? ‘So make sure you hurry back here, eh?’ she finished, her painted lips puckering then parting, in a come-hither smile.
Kathleen looked over at her dad, who was serving a customer at the far end of the bar. What on earth would he make of all this ridiculous carrying on? So she felt rather than saw Terry’s hand wrap around her own. ‘Oh, I doubt we’ll be back,’ he told Irene. ‘Not before closing time, anyway. I told this young lady here –’ he squeezed Kathleen’s hand as he said this – ‘that I was taking her out for the night, and the night is still young, so …’
‘Young lady?’ Irene scoffed. ‘This one?’ She nodded in Kathleen’s direction.
Kathleen sensed Terry stiffen. He nodded and cleared his throat. ‘That was the word I used, Irene, yes.’
Irene made a sound that was halfway between a huff and a puff; the sort of sound she was apt to make when passing judgement on female customers who dressed not to her liking, or on punters who refused to succumb to her charms. A sort of dismissive ‘pah!’ She began to turn away, muttering, grabbing a tea towel and flicking it. Terry watched her, but made no move to lead Kathleen away.
Then he spoke. ‘Young lady,’ he said. ‘Yes. Do you have an issue with that, Irene?’
He was talking to her back, but now she slowly turned around. Kathleen glanced towards her dad again, who was still chatting to the same customer, arm resting on pump, still oblivious to what was going on.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Irene snapped at Terry, her face pinched and pallid.
‘I said, do you have an issue with that, Irene?’ he repeated.
‘An issue?’ Irene blinked at him. ‘What’s an “issue”, when it’s at home?’
Once again, Kathleen felt Terry’s hand tighten around her own. His was hot. So was hers. It was difficult to work out where one began and the other ended.
Irene flapped the tea towel again, glaring hard now at Kathleen. She looked expanded now somehow, as if being pumped